In January 2015, Dish Network -the second largest pay TV platform in the US -introduced its over-the-top (OTT) internet TV service Sling TV to retain cord-cutters, who were cancelling expensive subscriptions and opting for low-cost alternatives such as Netflix and Amazon, or free services.

Sling TV risked cannibalising into Dish's subscriber base, but the gamble seems to have paid off. Today, Sling TV's subscriber base is pegged at 1.18 million by Leichtman Research Group. A testimony to Sling TV's success is CEO Roger Lynch's compensation package. He was the highest paid executive at Dish Network in 2016, outrunning the group chairman and CEO Charlie Ergen.

Lynch, 53, was in Mumbai earlier this month to meet Indian channel partners. He spoke exclusively with ET's Gaurav Laghate on what makes Sling TV a hit among Asian audiences in the US and how he sees the Indian market evolving.

Edited excerpts:

Sling TV was launched amid cord-cutting in the US. Wasn't there a worry that this venture would eat into Dish's subscriber base?

Sling TV is more suitable for younger people. Yes, when we launched Hindi and other international channels on Sling -and Dish has been a very strong player in those channels we were worried whether it will cause cannibalisation. But we have not seen any. It's the same for now for domestic channels also.

You claim to offer a large bouquet of international channels in the US. Did that help you in getting more Diaspora consumers?

Before Sling TV, in 2012 we had launched a service called DishWorld, which offered international channels from India, the Middle East, Brazil, China etc. Two years ago, once we completed all the contracts with the domestic channels such as Disney, ESPN and CNN, we launched Sling TV, and then all the international channels became part of Sling International.

So today, it has the widest bouquet of international channels, including Indian channels such as Colors, Sony, Star Plus and more.

Sling's International service has almost 400 channels and 20 separate channel packages.Within Hindi and other languages, we have different packs. We also carry a lot of South Asian language channels in Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Urdu and Arabic.

How does the pricing work?

We have different packages ranging from $10 to $45 per month. The main domestic pack, at $20, is very competitively priced as it offers a lot of sports, including the biggest sports and news channels in the US -ESPN and CNN. Most of our customers have opted for packs in the range of $20-25 per month.

In the US, high pay-TV cost forced people to cord-cut.India is a very different market, but do you see that trend catching up here as well?

I think in India, Reliance Jio is going to enable people to cord-cut, because they can watch content on their mobile phones.What may happen here is also what we saw in the US, that instead of going to one provider, you get all the content you want to watch by aggregating couple of things together, and create your own bundle of content.